Node.js urlObject.host API

Node.js provides a built-in module called url that allows us to parse URLs and manipulate them easily. One of the key components of a URL is the host value, and Node.js provides an API to extract this value from a URL string.

In this article, we will explore the urlObject.host API in Node.js and learn how to use it in our applications.

Understanding the host Value

In a URL, the host value typically refers to the domain name of the website. For example, in the following URL:

https://www.example.com/path/to/resource?query=param

The host value is www.example.com.

It is important to note that the host value does not include the port number or any path or query parameters. If the URL includes a port number, it will be specified in a separate property called port.

Extracting host using urlObject.host

When we parse a URL using the url module in Node.js, it returns an object with various properties representing different parts of the URL. The host value can be extracted from this object using the host property.

Here's an example:

const url = require('url');

const urlString = 'https://www.example.com/path/to/resource?query=param';
const urlObject = url.parse(urlString);

console.log(urlObject.host); // prints 'www.example.com'

In this example, we first require the url module and define a URL string. We then parse this string using the url.parse() method, which returns an object with various properties including host. We simply access this property to extract the host value.

Conclusion

In this article, we learned about the urlObject.host API in Node.js and how to use it to extract the host value from a URL. The url module provides many other APIs to manipulate URLs including parsing, formatting, and resolving relative URLs. By leveraging these APIs, we can easily work with URLs in our Node.js applications.